Storytime with Jessica – Children’s Book Week 2017

It’s Children’s Book Week!

Which is a wonderful, and very busy, time here in the library. We have lots of events, and a few competitions, on as well as our regular Storytime (with the added bonus of dressing up) and Pram Jam sessions. So, to celebrate this week we also have a Storytime post all about Children’s Book Week to share even more books than we can fit into our five sessions of Storytime. None of these are the books I’m going to be reading on Friday: Pandamonia, Take Ted Instead, Where is Bear?, and Bear Make Den. But, the whole list is amazing so I wanted to share more than just those four with you.

Books

In this sweet book all about babies, we follow six babies – Alice, Ruby, Mika, Zane, Vikran, and Tom as they eat, sleep, explore, and walk. With short, simple sentences and pictures that are beautiful and filled with mums, dads, and siblings, this is a very nice book to share with young children.

One of the books by Indigenous artists this year, this book is joined by Dream Little One, Dream, from the same team of Sally Morgan and Ambelin Kwaymullina. This book is all about counting and on each page after some gentle rhyming telling us about Joey’s day, mother kangaroo asks him/her what they can see. And each time Joey sees something different so the book is full of counting, animals and Ambelin Kwaymullina’s bright colourful and absolutely beautiful pictures that also feel simple enough to be appropriate for the ages that are going to love learning numbers with this book.

Nannie lives on a farm…and loves it. She loves her naughty sheep, and the grazing cows, and her family. And I love this book. It’s very simple, and follows a nice pattern were we find out about something on the farm and then we learn that Nannie loves it. Children can join in with the familiar portion because they will pick the repetition up and they are being told what Nannie loves as we move onto each new thing. This is the only book in my list which was Shortlisted.

Last year, I reviewed another Pig book – Pig the Fibber, and I’m shocked that Pig wasn’t already a winner. This is Pig’s fourth outing and you might be fooled into thinking that by this time he might have learned a lesson…or two, and would no longer be a naughty little pug. You would be wrong. For Pig has to win, even when he hasn’t or has to bend the rules to get there, and sulks terribly and complains and is just generally a terrible loser (and pretty horrible winner) until he learns a lesson…sort of (but it would be telling to divulge any more). I enjoy these books because they remind me of the irrepressible way that children do naughty things until they learn the consequences of their behaviour and there is just something about Aaron Blabey’s drawings that make me smile. If you have a person who can be a bit of a terrible winner/loser or gets very upset when they don’t win this might just be the book for them.

Craft

All of the books I’m reading on Friday deal with bears (I am claiming Pandas for the morning) so we’re making a bear craft. The bear theme wasn’t intentional but I’m very happy with it.

The Bear

We used a bought template but you can draw the different parts of the bear and cut it out instead.
Then using whatever colour crepe paper you like collage the bear. The slight edges that come up increase the 3D look of the bear.
If you want to make it stand up the legs need to slot into the body.

Background

Using a thick piece of card, folded in half, draw a habitat for the bear.
Sometimes, I just get such joy out of my job – like days when I get to draw a habitat for a bear.

I hope you’re all enjoying Children’s Book Week, and I’d love to hear your favourite book from this year’s list in the comments below.

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About The Author

I was a teacher for six years before becoming a Young People's Services Librarian. I taught everything from kindy to year seven and I'm really excited to be working towards greater early literacy with the children of Cockburn.

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